DETROIT — The Nets may boost their game against the NBA’s elite, but they also sleep on the also-rans — and usually lose as a result.
It’s a flaw the Nets (17-29) have to fix, starting Sunday at slumping Detroit, losers of seven of their past nine.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking the key is. We’re so young and we don’t understand the importance of every game,” DeMarre Carroll told The Post. “I feel like that’s the big thing. We’ve got to grow. I think guys want to win, but at the same time, those really great teams, they treat every game the same. They don’t get too high on some games, and don’t get too low on other games.
“So we’ve got to understand that. It’s going to come. But we’ve got a lot of young guys that have never won. I think the only people that ever really won is [Timofey] Mozgov — he won a championship. I made it to the Eastern Conference finals. Allen [Crabbe], they went to the second round. Nobody else has really won. We’ve got to try to build those habits.”
Carroll can be forgiven for forgetting Tyler Zeller, who finished atop the East last season with Boston. But his point certainly stands. The downside to the young Nets’ exuberance is inexperience, and that breeds inconsistency. The better the Nets’ opponent, the better their effort.
Though they’re a winless 0-9 against Golden State, Boston, Houston, Toronto and San Antonio — the top five teams in the league — they’ve clearly raised their game against those powerhouses, pushing most of them to the limit.
There was the rally in Boston that fell just short, 108-105, on New Year’s Eve. There was the last-second 87-85 heartbreaker against those same Celtics six days later, one that had them questioning the refereeing. And finally the 114-113 overtime nailbiter against Toronto just two days after that.
And the feisty Nets are actually 7-3 against the next rung of playoff contenders, the next five teams in the standings.
Starting with an upset over LeBron James and the Cavaliers that set the tone, they’ve posted a winning mark against the quintet of Cleveland, Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Miami and Washington. They’ve defeated the Heat and Wizards multiple times, beating the former by 24 and crushing the latter by 35.
The Nets clearly overachieve against better foes. But the fact that they’re a subpar 10-17 against every team below that top-10 watermark tells the flip side of that tale. They’ve dropped games to Sacramento, Orlando and Atlanta, the three worst teams in the league, all in tank mode. They lost to the dysfunctional Lakers, and are even an embarrassing 0-3 against the rival Knicks, certainly no juggernaut.
“DeMarre noticed that. After the Pistons he called it. He said it after the game. He said, ‘Man, we get up for the good teams: We get up for the Heat, the Celtics, the Cavs — guys like that. But we’ve got to get up for everybody,’ ” Caris LeVert told The Post. “That’s something that as a young team we’re getting better at, getting more consistent.”
That aforementioned Pistons game was a humbling 114-80 loss at home on Jan. 10. The Nets let Andre Drummond beat them up inside for 22 points and 20 rebounds. The Pistons haven’t won since, dropping four in a row and perfectly fitting the profile of the trap game the Nets so often stumble in.
Drummond had 18 points and 13 boards in the first half, and Brooklyn’s big men can’t let him have a dominant encore.
“Not letting him get any easy [baskets], with offensive rebounds around the rim, kind of make his job and his life a little more tough than we did last time,” Quincy Acy said. “He got started early, and that gave him confidence for the rest of the game.”